


Fight Night

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [66]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, M/M, MMA AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "any. any. First to respond to an emergency."</p><p>Teyla Emmagan, MMA fighter, is the first to respond when Rodney McKay, erstwhile scientist, is being mugged on the streets of Colorado Springs. John Sheppard helps rescue him, and Rodney, who much prefers curling up with his cat Pauli, is drawn into the world of MMA, friendship, and John Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight Night

**Author's Note:**

> I could not have written this without the endless patience, encouragement, and speedy work of Brumeier, without whose recommendation of the film 6 Bullets this story would not have happened. She is a beta and a friend extraordinaire.

Rodney really didn’t remember much of the incident. He’d been walking home from the lab when the two muggers had come out of nowhere. They were a blur of faces, dark hoodies, flashing knives. One had pinned him to the wall, knife at his throat, while the other patted him down for his wallet and phone and tried to unclasp his watch.

And then he’d heard a woman say, “Get away from him! Leave him alone!”

And a man said, “No, Teyla, stay back, you’re fighting tomorrow night. Let me.”

There was a snarl, and the man groping Rodney brandished his knife, and Rodney passed out.

Not fainted, passed out, he insisted to Radek and Sam.

So he was confused when Miko came into the lab several days later, eyes wide. “Rodney, you didn’t say it was John Sheppard who rescued you.”

“Who?” Rodney asked.

“John Sheppard, the MMA fighter?” Sam asked. Sam’s father had been in the Air Force and her brother in the Navy, where apparently blood sport was a pastime.

Rodney much preferred civilized pursuits, like the symphony. He played piano himself.

Miko nodded. She reached for Sam’s computer, and Sam let her have it. Miko typed in a few keywords _John Sheppard mugging rescue_ and a news story popped up.

“This is Julia Donovan with KUET news. Tonight, Teyla Emmagan is fighting to defend her title as the bantamweight women’s champion, but one of her training partners, John Sheppard, is the one dominating the headlines after his heroic rescue of an unknown citizen in Colorado Springs, home of Atlantis Gym, where Sheppard, Emmagan, and other well-known fighters train, including current heavyweight champion Ronon Dex and middleweight title contender Evan Lorne.”

The video switched from the reporter in the studio to grainy footage from a security camera, likely at the bank across the street from where Rodney was mugged. He could see himself - face unidentifiable - pinned against the wall by two black-clad men, and a man and a woman approaching. The woman dropped her bag and fell into a fighting stance, yelling, but it was the man who went after the muggers.

What happened looked like something out of an action movie, and when it was done, the man was kneeling on the pavement, Rodney in his arms while the woman tied up the muggers and called the police on her cell phone.

“What was he like up close?” Miko asked. “Could you feel his muscles? Did he smell good?”

“I was passed out,” Rodney said peevishly. “Get back to work.”

But on his lunch break, he tooled around on Google a bit and, after only a little hesitation, typed in John Sheppard’s name.

Damn, but John Sheppard was hot. Because he was a fighter, most of the pictures of him were shirtless, which meant Rodney could see the spiky black tattoo that curled from the side of his throat and down his arm. He didn’t look like a fighter, didn’t look like he spent forever in the gym getting pumped, but he was leanly muscled and looked intense.

Rodney wished he’d been able to feel John Sheppard’s muscles.

He clicked on a link to another news story. Rodney was pretty glad he was unidentified, because he looked damn undignified in the video. According to an interview with John Sheppard, John was the one who intervened because he didn’t want Teyla to risk her chances in her title fight the next night. He denied any sexist motives in telling Teyla to stay back, said it was purely out of professional concern for her career. Had their situations been reversed, he’d have respected Teyla’s decision to tell him to stay back - which she would have done, because she’d have been equally concerned for him. No, John didn’t know who he’d rescued, but hospital staff had told him the man was basically unharmed, and John was glad.

Rodney stared at the picture of John included in the story. When he was fully dressed, he looked ordinary. Yes, extraordinarily handsome, with his wild hair and bright hazel eyes, but not like some kind of super ninja.

Rodney supposed he owed the man a debt of gratitude. It looked like getting in contact with the man directly was impossible, but it was the modern age, and when he explored John Sheppard’s official website, he found a little space where he could send an email message to John (though it was probably received and vetted by some kind of PR minion).

He sent a brief, polite note of gratitude along with his contact information, should John wish to request anything further from Rodney as payment - though Rodney had no clue what a professional fighter could possibly want from a physics engineer - and then he got back to work.

“Tonight, a bunch of us are getting together to watch the fights,” Miko said. “You should come.”

“Sam’s hosting,” Radek added. “Her cheesecake is divine.”

Rodney wasn’t sure he wanted to join in on that madness. He knew they rotated hosting Pay Per View fight nights. Everyone chipped in, everyone brought a snack, and it was at someone else’s house every month. Rodney’s little apartment was not made for hosting any TV-based gatherings, and he was a terrible cook besides.

Miko nudged Rodney. “All of the Atlantis fighters will be there to cheer Teyla on, including John. Maybe seeing him some more will jog your memory of what happened.”

When Rodney had woken in the ambulance, a police officer had taken his statement about what happened. He was fuzzy on the whole thing, couldn’t identify his attackers, couldn’t identify his rescuers either, because he’d passed out. The attackers hadn’t hurt him too badly - he’d suffered shock was all - and his wallet and phone had been recovered; they hadn’t managed to get his watch before his rescuer jumped in. Both men were being charged with assault and armed robbery. Rodney might have to testify at a trial if they didn’t take a plea deal.

Honestly, Rodney wanted to put the whole thing behind him.

“No, thanks. I’ll stay in tonight.” It was Friday night, and he wasn’t too keen on being out and about. As he had no car, he had to walk everywhere, and he didn’t think he wanted to be walking alone in the dark again any time soon. He could huddle on his couch with his cat Pauli and listen to the New York Philharmonic do the collected works of John Williams and read the latest issue of Scientific American. That was a perfect way to spend a Friday night, thank you very much.

He ordered dinner in from a place he knew took his citrus allergy seriously, and then he and Pauli settled in to read together, Pauli napping on Rodney’s lap while he read (and highlighted and scribbled snide notes in the margins).

His cell phone buzzed.

_Glad you’re okay._

It was a text message from an unfamiliar number.

Rodney stared at it. _Thank you, I think. Who is this?_

_John. We sort of met the other night, but you were unconscious by the time I could introduce myself._

_Oh! Well, thank you for the terribly heroic rescue._

_It’s what any other well-trained person would have done. Teyla was quicker on the uptake, but she has a big fight tonight._

_Shouldn’t you be watching her fight?_

_Undercard matches are still going._

_I don’t know what that means._

_On a fight night, multiple matches occur. The lesser-known fighters fight on the undercard. Better-known fighters fight on the main card. Title fights are at the end._

_Oh. Thanks for clearing that up. How long till your friend fights?_

_It’ll be at least a couple of hours._

_You’re a very good friend._

_I try._

Rodney stared at his phone for a moment, then saved John’s number, just in case. Then he set his phone down and kept on reading.

His phone buzzed again fifteen minutes later.

_What were you doing alone on that street so late?_

_Walking home after working late. What were you doing?_

_Last-minute training. Where do you work?_

_At a lab. I’m a physicist._

_That’s cool. What are you working on?_

_Attempting to find a clean source of energy._

_Cold fusion or zero-point energy?_

Rodney stared at the screen. It was a perfectly legitimate question, just not one Rodney had ever expected to be asked by someone who got his head beat in on a regular basis.

 _Zero-point,_ he typed back slowly, disbelieving.

_From vacuum space or sub-space?_

_Sub-space._

_That’s really cool._

Before Rodney could respond, John sent another message.

_Main card fights are starting. Better focus. These guys plan on challenging me, Evan, and Ronon in the upcoming fights. Good luck with your research, and I’m glad you’re okay._

_Thanks for saving me,_ Rodney typed back. _Good luck with your research too._

And that was the end of that.

 

*

On Monday, Miko and Radek ribbed Rodney about his celebrity rescuer, pulled up pictures on the Internet of John watching the fights, John cheering for Teyla, John and several other attractive men hugging Teyla after she won her fight.

Rodney winced when he saw how beat up Teyla was, how worse off her opponent Sora Tyrus looked. He shuddered to think of anyone ever hurting Jeannie like that. He couldn’t imagine voluntarily putting himself at risk for such harm.

Rodney was oddly heartened when Radek showed him a picture of John bent over his phone, tapping away and smiling.

Miko poked Rodney in the face, and he realized he’d been smiling a little dopily at the picture. “Spill, Rodney. If we look at your phone, will we see text messages from John Sheppard?”

“No,” Rodney said, a little too quickly. He knew he was blushing, but there was nothing he could do about it.

But on his lunch break, he sent John a text message. _Heard your friend won her fight. Tell her congratulations for me._ And because he’d possibly been working with Miko for too long, he added a little smiley emoticon to his message.

Then an alarm started to blare, and Radek came skittering into the office shrieking in mostly Czech. Rodney didn’t need to speak Czech to know there was an emergency. Apparently one of the lasers had gone awry and was firing on anything that moved, some kind of deranged souped-up home-defense system. (Rodney, for all that he was a genius, was sometimes lazy and went low-tech and had laid strips of bubble wrap on the floor of every doorway for his home security system.) Miko and Sam had gone charging into the lab with the awry laser like a pair of madcap heroes, Miko armed with a mirror, Sam armed with her nicest screwdrivers.

Radek wanted to pull the fire alarm. Rodney convinced him to grab Sam’s second-nicest set of screwdrivers and go into the bathroom with him, pull the mirror off the wall, and go help Miko defend Sam while Sam tried to disarm the laser.

Several hours later the laser was disarmed, the lab was a mess, and everyone was exhausted. They ordered in take-out from another place that took Rodney’s citrus allergy seriously, and they sat around in the smoking ruins of their battlefield, eating sushi and wondering how best to explain to Director Woolsey what had gone wrong.

“If we get it cleaned up before his next spot inspection,” Miko said, “we can write in the report that there was a laser malfunction and we had to pause or experiments to repair the laser.”

“But we haven’t fixed the laser,” Radek said. “It’s disabled.”

“And spot inspections,” Sam added, “are unannounced. So unless we get this cleaned up right now -”

“Go,” Rodney said. “I’ll stay.” He knew Radek helped his widowed sister take care of an unruly pair of nephews, that Sam was seeing someone she never talked about but whose time was precious, and Miko had about a billion friends online she liked to spend time with.

“Are you sure?” Sam asked.

Rodney nodded. “Yeah. Pauli will be fine for a couple more hours.”

“Thanks,” Miko said. “After the next laser attack, dinner’s on me.” She patted Rodney on the shoulder and heaved herself to her feet, went to throw away her takeout carton and get ready to go.

One by one the others drifted out. Radek stuck around to help Rodney get the mirrors mounted back in the bathroom, but then it was just Rodney, listening to Verdi’s _Aida_ while he scrubbed scorch marks off of everything, swept up debris, and straightened up the lab.

It wasn’t until he was satisfied that the room would pass muster for a ‘minor’ laser malfunction that he pulled on his jacket, grabbed his wallet and keys from the coffee mug on his desk, and headed for the door.

The doors locked automatically behind him, and he took the stairs down to the street. He cut through the alley onto the pavement, and his phone buzzed in his pocket.

There was a message from Miko.

_Go home, Rodney._

But there was an older message, too. From John Sheppard. _Teyla says thank you, and she hopes you enjoyed the show._

Rodney paused, perplexed. Dare he admit that he hadn’t watched the fights himself?

“Not to be a victim-blamer, but if you keep wandering around the streets after dark with your nose in your phone, someone’s going to think you’re an easy target.”

Rodney yelped and spun around.

The man standing under the streetlamp was none other than John Sheppard, wearing a t-shirt and track pants and carrying a gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“Working late at the lab again?” John asked, smiling. He looked unfairly amused.

“Yes,” Rodney said. “There was a laser malfunction, and I stuck around to clean it up.”

John raised his eyebrows. “You work at the lab alone?”

“No, but the others have people to go home to, and I just have my cat Pauli, so I said I’d clean up. There’s still more work to do, but the worst is done.” Rodney swallowed hard. “Sneaking up on people isn’t very nice.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” John said easily. “I just happened to be walking this way as well. Want me to walk you home?”

“This isn’t high school, thanks.”

“You were mugged on this street last week.” John fixed Rodney with a serious look. “You should have armed guards or something.”

Rodney swallowed hard, remembered the knife at his throat. “Well, in the absence of armed guards, I guess I’ll have to accept you.”

“So, this way?” John nodded at the road stretching out in front of them.

Rodney nodded. He lived above a bustling coffee shop. He’d been worried that the noise of the joint would outweigh the benefit of living so close to the lab, but he was usually gone while the coffee shop was going, and in the evenings, the faint sounds of laughter and conversation made him feel less alone. “Yes, this way.”

John fell into step beside Rodney. “So, your cat. Polly wants a cracker or the Pauli Exclusion Principle?”

“The latter,” Rodney said. He glanced at John sidelong, was intrigued by the ink on John’s skin that trailed down his throat and beneath his collar. “You much into physics?”

“Been on bed rest more than once after a nasty fight.” John shrugged. “Had to read something to stop from being bored.”

“Not to sound like an academic elitist, but...how did someone like you end up a fighter?” Up close and personal, John Sheppard was beautiful.

“Someone like me?” John asked, amused.

“Someone who knows the difference between vacuum and sub-space zero-point energy, someone who knows the Pauli exclusion principle, someone who enjoys science.”

“Some of the greatest scientists were also warriors and soldiers,” John said. “A fit body makes for an active mind, right?”

“Well, yes,” Rodney said, and he knew he needed to eat better.

“Truth is,” John said, “I was majoring in mathematics at Stanford, and I needed extra cash, and I discovered that fighting was a pretty good way to make quick cash. And I was good at it. Better at fighting than math, at any rate. I met Ronon and Evan, who were art majors, and we started training together, and then Teyla joined us, and here we are. Pro MMA fighters.”

“Do you ever miss math?” Rodney asked.

“I can do it pretty much any time I want. Besides, I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and nothing gets me going like a good fight.” John smiled.

“I prefer the symphony,” Rodney said.

“Music is fun. Music is good.”

Rodney glanced up, saw they were in front of the coffee shop. “This is my place,” he said.

John raised his eyebrows. “You live in a coffee shop?”

“Apartment upstairs. I get a lot of free coffee in apology for the noise.”

“Of course. Well, glad you made it home safely, Rodney. Be careful, all right? Don’t want you getting hurt again. You’re too pretty to die young.” John smiled, waved, and walked away.

It wasn’t until Rodney was safely ensconced in his apartment with Pauli on his lap that he realized: John had called him pretty.

 

*

The next day, Rodney sent John a _good morning_ text.

John responded mid-afternoon with _Evan kicked my ass at grappling, but I had a good enough morning. How goes science?_

Rodney had spent all morning with Sam, fixing the psychotic laser (Radek insisted lasers, as inanimate objects, could not be psychotic), and they managed to get it together right before Woolsey showed up for a spot inspection.

_Science goes with laser burns and politics._

_You know, I might just take laser burns over Teyla beating me with her sticks again._

And so they traded texts back and forth, casually, John giving Rodney updates on his training, which mostly seemed to involve him getting his ass kicked by his training partners, and Rodney giving John updates on things at the lab, which mostly involved petty arguments, stolen food, and late-night pushes to get data.

When Radek, Miko, and Sam invited Rodney to fight night the next month, he said yes. He brought homemade salsa and citrus-free chips and beers to share (at Miko’s house, which was huge).

“Who’s fighting tonight?” Rodney asked, settling onto the couch beside Radek. He hadn’t been lying. Sam’s cheesecake was divine.

“A bunch of undercard fighters no one cares about,” Radek began.

“Vala Mal Doran’s fighting Amelia Banks,” Miko said. “They’re both hoping to challenge Teyla Emmagan down the road.”

“Title fight is Ronon Dex versus Teal’c Chulak,” Radek said.

Sam cast Rodney a sidelong look he couldn’t quite read. “John Sheppard is taking on Aiden Ford for a shot against Cameron Mitchell for the welterweight title.”

John was fighting? Rodney sat up a little straighter. He hadn’t said. Rodney had assumed he trained every day because it was his job.

“Obviously,” Miko said, “we’re rooting for Sheppard and Dex, because we have to be loyal to the hometown crew.”

“Obviously,” Rodney echoed.

Watching the fights was actually really, really hard. Rodney wasn’t a fan of violence, so whenever one of the fighters landed a particularly good punch or kick, the others cheered, but Rodney flinched. He spent a good chunk of the undercard fights checking his phone for work emails (which was silly, as all his coworkers were in the same room as him), sending text messages to his sister Jeannie, and dreading John having to be subjected to the same pain.

Rodney understood very quickly, however, that MMA was a sport with a lot of technical rules, and what seemed a lot like vicious flailing was apparently fairly calculated. He listened to both the professional commentary and his coworkers’ commentary and realized that there was a lot more going on than just men and women swinging limbs at each other.

“Amelia Banks has powerful kicks,” Sam said, “but Vala Mal Doran’s takedown defense is better.”

She and Miko were watching the screen very closely.

“Did you see that?” Miko asked. “Banks almost had that ankle lock in. If Mal Doran had turned just the wrong way -”

“Damn!” Even Radek flinched back at the elbow Mal Doran slammed into Banks’s face.

“She’s bleeding pretty badly,” Sam said. “Think the ref’ll call it?”

The two women were circling each other, on their feet, and Rodney’s stomach was twisted in knots, and then Mal Doran dove, drove Banks into the ground. They wrestled - the women were incredibly flexible compared to the men, and the men were very flexible in their own right - and then Mal Doran was on top of Banks, arms tangled with hers.

“She’s going for an Americana,” Radek said.

He, Miko, and Sam all leaned forward, glued to the screen.

“I’d tap,” Sam said.

“Tap, dammit!” Miko cried.

And Banks clapped Mal Doran on the arm, and the ref dove into break them up, and the crowds went wild.

A camera panned over to the audience, and Rodney recognized Teyla Emmagan, looking pretty good after the fight she’d been in last month. Teyla smiled graciously, nodded at the camera, and then the camera was back on the octagon, the ref standing beside the two women. Banks had an ice pack pressed to her shoulder. Mal Doran looked wrecked.

“You know what I don’t get?” Rodney said. “How anyone expects either combatant to have even a remotely coherent response to a complex technical question after doing...that.”

“I know, right?” Miko munched on a handful of chips.

“Mal Doran’s pretty hot.” Radek smiled dreamily at the screen.

Sam laughed. “Radek likes a woman who can kick his ass.”

“That’s any woman in this room,” Miko said absently, reached for another handful of chips.

“Hey!” Radek protested.

Rodney snorted. “Oh please. Sam could kick all of our asses and you know it.”

“Miko could give me a run for my money,” Sam said. “All that judo in high school -”

“And college.” Miko hummed happily. “Rodney, this salsa is great. You have to give me the recipe.”

“Sure,” Rodney said, and he realized. These people weren’t just his coworkers. They were his friends.

When it was finally John’s turn to fight, Rodney was on the edge of his seat. He couldn’t help it. The camera kept panning to Teyla in the crowd, Evan beside her, but during the opening fights John had been nowhere to be seen. Rodney had debated sending him a text message all night, and finally, when the lights went dark, he sent a quick _good luck_.

Aiden Ford walked out first. Rodney, while he preferred classical music, wasn’t oblivious to other genres of music, and he’d joined in the others’ commentary on different fighters’ chosen walk-out songs. He’d joined in on their commentary about the fighters’ tattoos (they needed their names tattooed on themselves because they got hit so much they might forget, right?) and the weird shorts they wore and anything but the violence, because it frightened him.

But it also intrigued him.

So when Aiden Ford swaggered up to the octagon surrounded by his posse of young, clean-cut men (were they all Marines?), bobbing his head to the beat of his hip-hop song ( _I am just like my country / I’m young, scrappy and hungry / And I’m not throwing away my shot_ ), Rodney was horrified. He had to be about ten years younger than John, was lean and sleek and looked like a killing machine. One of the refs checked Ford’s mouthguard and cup, and then Ford trotted up to the octagon. He paused at the edge of the mat, bowed, and then did a lap around the octagon, and the fans cheered.

What happened next was downright haunting.

The fans went quiet, and someone started to whistle. A slow, melancholy melody. And then more people joined in, and more people joined in, and there was John, flanked by Teyla and Evan. John was whistling, as were Teyla and Evan, and Rodney realized that every single one of John’s fans in the arena was whistling, and Ford’s fans were quiet, respectful.

Music built beneath the whistling, and just as John reached the octagon, guitar chords spilled across arena. The ref checked John’s mouthguard and cup, and then John trotted up the steps to the octagon, also paused and bowed at the edge of the mat, and did a slow lap around the octagon. He nodded at Ford, settled into his own corner, shook out his limbs.

He was sleek and shirtless, and Rodney wanted to trace the lines of his tattoo with his lips and tongue and hands, but John’s expression was blank. Fierce.

Miko shivered. “That song gets me every time.”

“What song is it?” Rodney asked. He had goosebumps.

“‘In Any Tongue’, by David Gilmour,” Sam said. “Not sure why he chose it.”

“Doesn’t really get you pumped up,” Rodney agreed, but he made a mental note to find the song and listen to all of it.

And then the fight was on.

Compared to most of the other fights, there was an awful lot of circling each other, eyeing each other. The crowd was getting restless. Radek was bored.

“Come on, stop playing games.” He gestured impatiently at the screen.

“John Sheppard is an intensely cerebral fighter,” Sam said. “Look at him, the way he’s leaning in - it makes the distance between him and his opponent very deceptive.”

“He has a very traditional kenpo stance,” Miko added. “Most people insist that BJJ rules the day, but a good kenpo fighter, with true kenpo speed, can go a long way.”

When John moved, he was lightning fast, snapping kicks at Ford’s front leg.

“Those can’t be worth many points, can they?” Rodney asked.

“Every strike thrown that accurately connects is worth it,” Radek explained.

“Get kicked in the same spot enough times and it’ll bite you in the ass down the road.” Sam narrowed her eyes. “Look at the way Sheppard maintains the perfect distance.”

Ford feinted a kick. John slipped out of the way, followed up with three quick punches, circled around Ford some more.

“He’s always looking for the better angle, too,” Miko added.

“Sheppard has killer counterstrikes.” Radek nodded wisely. “He isn’t always the aggressor, but anyone who attacks him certainly pays for it.”

Rodney winced when Ford threw a punch. It looked like it hit, but then John was hitting back, two punches and a kick to the body. “Sheppard’s not that good at dodging, is he? He barely makes it out of the way.”

“On the contrary,” Sam said, “he’s got amazing reflexes. Better to slip just barely out of the way and stay in range for a counterstrike than to dance far out of reach. More energy-efficient - small motions cost less - and generally the better tactic.”

“Oh.” Rodney really didn’t understand combat at all.

“Ford’s got great ground game,” Radek said. “But so far Sheppard is keeping things standing.”

Rodney thought of the various text messages he’d gotten from John, about how he was always getting his ass kicked at grappling, and frowned.

“Ford’s being too cautious,” Miko said at the end of the second round. “A couple of those kicks he threw were good ones, would’ve connected.”

Radek snorted. “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of Sheppard’s counterstrikes, though.”

“True, true.” Miko waited till the break between the second and third round, then vaulted off the couch to get a drink of water.

She got back just in time to catch the start of the third round.

“Ford’s corner told him to get aggressive,” Radek said. “Let’s see if he takes their advice.”

John’s corner consisted of Evan, Teyla, and John’s coach Jack, a silver fox of a man who had piercing dark eyes. While Teyla was patting John down with a baggie full of ice and Evan was giving John water, Jack was murmuring advice, and John was nodding, and then he was stepping back onto the mats.

Ford took his corner’s advice all right. He shot for John, and they went down on the ground, rolled around in a baffling tangle of limbs, and then John was back on his feet, backing away from Ford, who was snapping kicks at him from the ground. John backed away enough for Ford to stand up.

One of the professional commentators noted that John had been working on his takedown defense, that his training partners Evan Lorne and Ronon Dex both had extensive BJJ backgrounds, had probably drilled him endlessly. They had no idea how right they were.

Ford came at John again with a series of fast punches. John slipped aside, slipped to the other side, slipped again. One connected. Rodney winced, but then John came alive, snapping at Ford with punches and punches and kicks.

“Look at that hook punch,” Miko said. “People don’t use that enough.”

Ford recovered, rallied back against John, and Rodney curled his hands into fists, shoulders hunched, praying John didn’t get hurt.

Ford and John looked like they were outright brawling when the round ended, and the ref jumped in, separated them.

“That was a close one,” Radek said.

Miko shook her head. “No. Fight went to Sheppard for sure.”

“But neither of them tapped,” Rodney said. “So isn’t it a tie?”

“If no one taps or is knocked out, it goes to decision,” Sam said.

“Who decides?” Rodney asked.

“The judges,” Sam said.

Rodney blinked. “There are judges?”

John and Ford were talking to each other, nodding and smiling like they were old friends instead of two mortal enemies. Evan pressed a water bottle on John, and Ford’s friends brought him a t-shirt.

Then the ref stepped between them while the scores were announced. Rodney was confused about who won what, but then the ref raised John’s hand high, and the crowd broke into cheers.

Rodney sank back, relieved. And, while the others were scrambling for snacks before the big title fight, fired off another text message.

_Congratulations on your win._

The Emcee held a microphone out to Ford, asked him how he was feeling. Ford said he felt like he’d put up a pretty good fight, but Sheppard was a good fighter, a canny fighter, and Ford felt like he knew what he needed to do to prevail the next time they met. The Emcee asked John how he felt, and John said felt like Ford had done a great job, but John had been training hard, been doing his best to be prepared for Ford’s ground game, and now he had to get ready to face Cameron Mitchell for the title.

Rodney was impressed at how eloquent the both of them were, given how they’d been punched in the face a whole bunch. He was also impressed at how neither of them looked too banged up. Maybe Sam was right about how good John was at dodging.

Ronon’s fight with Teal’c was pretty much what Rodney had expected going in. It was fast-paced, aggressive, and non-stop. Rodney didn’t pay nearly as much attention to the fight as he ought to have, given that Ronon was the hometown hero and the others were cheering him on. He kept furtively sneaking peeks at his phone.

Ronon won by the skin of his teeth, and everyone seemed to think it was because he was so much younger than Teal’c, who was in his late forties by all accounts (he certainly didn’t look that old).

When the officials put the championship belt on Ronon, the crowd went wild. The Emcee thrust the microphone in Ronon’s face, asked how Ronon felt now that he’d won.

“Good,” Ronon said.

And that was all he said.

The others laughed, commented fondly about how Ronon was a man of few words, and Rodney had always been a bit weirded out, how people felt like they had personal connections, some sense of ownership over celebrities and people they didn’t know. Rodney barely knew John, though, but he still felt like he had a personal connection with him.

After the after-show, during which the highlights of the fights were hashed and re-hashed, Rodney packed up his salsa bowl, said farewell to the others, and headed home. Sam and Radek offered him rides, but he declined, was content to walk. Was imagining how nice it would be, if John walked with him again. But John was hundreds of miles away, recovering from his fight.

Rodney had washed the salsa bowl, checked on Pauli, brushed his teeth, and undressed for bed, when his cell phone finally buzzed.

_Thanks._

And then, _Hey, were you watching?_

_My friends rotate hosting fight night every month. They’ve been badgering me to join them for a long time. I finally said yes. I didn’t realize you were on the main card._

_What did you think?_

_You have really good precision,_ Rodney offered.

_It’s even better live._

_Not sure I could handle seeing you get hurt live._

_I really didn’t get banged up too much this time, actually. Match was more of a chess game than a fight._

_Are you sure?_

John didn’t respond with a text message but a badly-lit selfie. He was smiling, though. Pale. But had no bruises.

 _You look okay,_ Rodney admitted.

_Well, thanks. Flattery gets you everywhere. Anyway, I need to sleep. Worked hard tonight. Have a good weekend._

_Good night,_ Rodney typed back. And then he fell asleep.

 

*

He dreamed of John Sheppard’s gleaming gold skin, and the tattoo curling down his skin. He dreamed of spinning stars and galaxies, of the expanding universe. He dreamed of vacuum space, of sub-space, of a cool, calm, endless energy that wended its way through the darkness.

And then he woke, and he went into the lab, and he worked. He found John’s walk-out song on YouTube, played it over and over again. He learned to whistle that opening refrain while he worked on further repairs for the mis-firing laser. When his hands were sore from the constant twisting motion, he set Sam’s best screwdrivers aside and sprawled in front of his computer, and he listened to John’s song some more. He wondered at the melancholy in the song, why John had chosen it. Best as Rodney could tell, it was a song about a soldier come home from war, a soldier haunted by what he’d done.

Best as Rodney could tell, John had never been a soldier.

The song ended, and Rodney was left wondering about the haunting lyrics ( _I know sorrow tastes the same on any tongue_ ), when YouTube informed him that the next video up was The Best of John Sheppard: Fight Highlights. Instead of getting up and scrounging around for a magic eraser to scrub off the worst of the burn marks on the wall that they hadn’t managed to get rid of before Woolsey’s inspection, Rodney settled back in his chair to watch.

The clip show was set to some loud metal music that made Rodney wince, but John at his finest in the octagon was very fine, to say the least. He was brutal and precise, he was fast and vicious; he was a good fighter. Violence in general made Rodney uncomfortable (and sometimes when he closed his eyes, he felt the ghost of hands on him, the ghost of a blade at his throat, so he made himself walk home at night, because he refused to let the thugs win, to make him afraid of his own damn sidewalk in his own damn city), but he could easily appreciate John’s grace and lean strength.

When the clip show ended, Rodney went to stand up and go back to work, but YouTube had thoughtfully queued up The Best of Cameron Mitchell: Fight Highlights. Cameron Mitchell was the guy John was fighting next, the current champion in John’s weight class. Rodney leaned in and watched intently. Cameron Mitchell was good. Very good. He was champion for a reason. Where John played a distance game, a counterstrike game, Mitchell was aggressive, was relentless, got in his opponent’s face and unleashed a flurry of pinpoint-precise strikes. And he was good on the ground, tapped his opponents out in grappling locks at least as often as he knocked them out.

Rodney watched Mitchell knock a man out with a particularly explosive punch, watched in slow motion as the man’s head rocked back and blood sprayed out of his nose, and he dreaded the thought of John going through that.

The next highlight reel was for Evan Lorne, and Rodney forced himself to turn the computer off, turn up his music, and keep scrubbing.

Rodney spent all of Sunday evening reading up obsessively on Cameron “Flyboy” Mitchell, about his career and skills and win-loss record. The more he read, the more worried he was for John.

When John texted to see how he was doing, Rodney said he’d fixed the laser in the lab and was hanging out at home with Pauli, said nothing about running stats on Cameron Mitchell and seeing a whole lot of hurt in John’s future. John informed Rodney he’d spent all day relaxing and recuperating from his fight, but it was back to work on Monday, depending on what the team’s doctor said.

Rodney quietly hoped the doctor would tell John to never fight again. Rodney had looked up how much a fighter could make for just showing up for a bout, how much more a fighter made for winning, and John could probably retire, right? He could hang out at the lab with Rodney and run calculations and -

Rodney’s irrationality hit its limit for the weekend, and he and Pauli fell asleep on the couch watching Star Trek reruns.

On Monday, Miko and Sam exclaimed over the repaired laser and the cleaned lab. Rodney didn’t take credit like he usually would have, instead dove headlong back into his research. He was pretty sure something in his dream had been a breakthrough, a sign. He just needed to figure it out.

During Rodney’s lunch break, he was sitting at his computer, listening to music and munching on a croissant sandwich delivered from the coffee shop below his apartment, when Miko sat down beside him.

“It’s a great song, isn't it?” She beamed at him.

Rodney blinked and then realized. He was listening to John's walk-out song. Immediately he paused it and changed it to the collected tenor arias of Placido Domingo, but Miko’s expression was still damnably knowing.

“Here’s the thing,” Miko said. “I have a huge crush on Evan Lorne, and I will be the first to admit it.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Rodney asked. Evan Lorne was good-looking, if you were into that whole blue-eyed, dimpled, incredibly muscular thing.

“Radek is a coward,” Miko said, and Radek was too engrossed in the research paper he was reading to notice or lodge protest. “Sam and I want to start taking the self-defense class that they teach at Atlantis Gym, and Radek refuses to come with us.”

“You have a black belt in judo,” Rodney said, eyeing her dubiously, “and Sam has a black belt in - in general ass-kicking. Why do you need a self-defense class?”

“Teyla's teaching it while she recovers,” Miko said. “And basic self-defense for things like handling armed assailants is always useful. Besides,” she added in a lower voice, “after what happened to you, you should learn to protect yourself.”

“I’m fine.” Rodney turned back to his lunch. “I’m not afraid. Being afraid means those thugs won.”

“Learning to take care of yourself doesn't mean you're afraid,” Miko said. “I know you keep walking home alone at night. Come with us, please?”

“How much are lessons and gear going to cost?” Rodney asked.

Miko cheered. “Yay! Sam, Rodney’s in!” She leaped out of her chair and bounded across the lab to Sam, who'd been running calculations on a much scribbled-upon whiteboard all morning.

Sam turned, and she smiled brightly at Rodney, pleased, and Rodney had the sneaking suspicion that he’d been played. Well-played.

Still, he bought himself some track pants and workout shirts and sneakers and followed Miko and Sam down the street to Atlantis Gym on Wednesday night. He didn’t tell John he was going to sign up for the class - would John find out? Did he have access to records of that sort of thing? - and he avoided any mention of a change in his schedule. John kept up a running commentary on helping Evan train for his next big fight, and Rodney kept John appraised of things in the lab (research, research, more research), and they had a steady little text message friendship, checking in with each other in a cordial sort of way.

Atlantis Gym wasn’t too fancy, had a boxing ring, some wrestling mats, and various punching bags hung up. John and Evan were grappling on one of the mats while Ronon and Jack shouted from the corners. The entire gym was well-lit, but most of the equipment also looked well-used, well-loved, like a small-town gym instead of the place that turned out two title-holding fighters and was looking to turn out two more.

Rodney was terribly dismayed when he joined Sam and Miko at the edge of one of the mats and was literally the only man besides Teyla’s co-instructor, a tall, slender man with blue eyes and brown hair and glasses and who looked like Cam Mitchell if Rodney squinted.

Some of the other women cast Rodney looks askance, but Miko and Sam smiled encouragingly at him, so he lined up beside them.

While the man - Daniel - led them in stretching exercises, Teyla talked about the philosophy of self-defense, its purpose, which was to protect oneself and others when necessary, and which would sometimes require doing harm to another human being. She talked about how this class would teach them not only strategies for dealing with a physical assault but also other common-sense ways to stay safe while they were out and about on their daily business. She told everyone that this was a safe place, where they would learn to trust and protect each other.

“Now, if it is too personal, you are not required to share,” she said, “but I am interested in knowing why you are all here and what levels of skill you have.”

As it turned out, more than one woman already had a martial arts or self-defense background. One woman, who was tinier than Miko, explained that because she was so small people saw her as an easy target, and she didn’t want to be an easy target. Another woman, who was plump and middle-aged but had fire in her eyes, told the class that she was a single mother and she wanted to be able to protect herself and her son. Recognition lit in Teyla’s eyes when it was Rodney’s turn. He cleared his throat.

“I’m here because, well, my coworkers are very insistent, and also...also I was mugged. Out on the street. A few weeks back. People came to my rescue, which I’m very grateful for, but I walk home alone every night, and I - I don’t want to have to be afraid of my own streets. So. There you have it.”

Teyla smiled at him. “I am glad you are well, and am very pleased to see you here.”

Once everyone was stretched out, they started with very basic escapes from wrist-grabs, Daniel acting as aggressor, Teyla acting as defender. Rodney couldn’t remember the last time someone else had just grabbed his wrist, but all of the women seemed to accept that at some time in their lives, some stranger would assume he had the right to put his hands on her, even casually. A casual grasp, as Teyla pointed out, could become dangerous very quickly. Rodney hadn’t thought he’d ever be mugged, though, so he paired off with Sam - Miko and the other tiny girl joined forces immediately - and he learned the different ways of escaping from one- and two-handed wrist-grabs.

While Teyla explained each technique, Rodney would sneak glances at the mat where John and Evan were still grappling. They weren’t going full-tilt anymore. In fact, Ronon and Jack seemed to be instructing them on something highly technical. “Evan, Hanson’s favorite place to be is side control. John, get him in side control.”

John and Evan, both in those distractingly tight fight shorts, were tangled up on the mat in a position that was a little too aggressive to be sexy. John slid, positioned himself against Evan’s ribs, weight on him.

“Now,” Jack said, “Hanson likes to go for a kimura from here. John, wrap him up.”

There was a lot of techno-babble that ensued, angles and sliding and adjusting. It was fascinating to watch. Jack and Ronon made Evan escape from the move in slow motion five times, then instructed John to go full speed.

Sam grabbing Rodney’s wrist jolted him back to the present.

“Sorry,” he muttered, but she just smiled knowingly, and they continued drilling.

After the wrist grab escapes, they learned bear hug escapes, and then their hour was up. While Teyla cooled them down with more stretches, Daniel discussed their non-combat safety tip for the week: situational awareness. Being aware of who and what was around them. Keeping an eye on the cars that passed - was one car passing again and again? Was a car following them? Did a certain car parked outside their office look unfamiliar? If they practiced being paranoid for a bit, after a while they wouldn’t have to think too hard about what was going on, their minds would be aware.

Teyla and Daniel congratulated them on work well done, encouraged them to practice and stay safe, and said they’d see everyone next week.

Rodney sat down at the edge of the mat to put on his sneakers, and he’d just finished tying his laces when a shadow fell over him.

It was John, wearing track pants and a t-shirt and a matching jacket, gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“You didn’t tell me you’d be here.” John was smiling despite the possibly accusatory tone to his words.

“I - wanted it to be a surprise,” Rodney said finally.

“I guess you took my advice to heart about being a little safer.” John offered a hand, pulled Rodney to his feet. “You came with friends from your lab, right? Are you getting a ride home or do you want me to walk you home?”

Rodney glanced over his shoulder. Miko and Sam were conferring with Miko’s tiny new friend.

“I feel like walking,” Rodney said. He fired off a text message to both Sam and Miko, letting them know he was walking home. “I’m feeling a little braver about my streets.”

John nodded wisely, led Rodney to the door. “Right after practice is the best and worst time to get jumped. On the one hand, you’re super alert and your muscle memory is at the forefront for defensive moves. On the other hand, you’ve also been training, and so you’re tired.”

“You have much experience getting jumped right after practice?” Rodney asked. He and John started down the pavement in the direction of Rodney’s apartment.

“Not so much,” John said. “But I do have some experience responding to someone being jumped right after training.” He nudged Rodney’s shoulder, smiled.

“Not going to happen tonight,” Rodney said firmly. He lifted his chin, threw back his shoulders. “Tonight I am awake and alert and ready for anything. Any wrist grabs, at least.”

“And you have me.”

“And I have you.” Rodney felt oddly warmed with John at his side.

John remembered where Rodney lived, which also made Rodney absurdly pleased. They paused beside the door that led up to Rodney’s apartment, and John clapped Rodney on the shoulder.

“Good hustle tonight,” he said. “You worked hard. You going to keep coming?”

Rodney nodded. “Yeah, I will.”

“All right. See you next week.”

 

*

Rodney and John traded text messages every day, John helping Evan train for his big fight, Rodney continuing research at the lab (he had an idea, it was just on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite speak it yet). Every week Rodney accompanied Sam and Miko to self-defense, and John walked him home after class, and they talked, got to know each other. John told Rodney he had an older brother who was married with kids; Rodney reciprocated with tales of his younger sister, her English major husband, and his admittedly adorable niece. John and Rodney learned that John had been at Stanford around the same time Rodney was at CalTech, and somehow they hadn’t run into each other despite occasionally moving in the same circles, like the university-level academic decathlon. Rodney learned that even though John’s walk-out song was a David Gilmour song, his favorite artist was Johnny Cash, and he played the guitar in his spare time. Rodney told John that he liked classical music and played piano. One night, while they walked home, they whistled together.

Somehow Rodney got talked into hosting the next fight night at his place, so one Saturday he made sure his apartment was scrupulously clean, he rearranged the furniture in the den to accommodate everyone having a good view of the television, and he prepared some healthy, citrus-free snacks (and, okay, also baked a pan of gooey brownies). He was on his computer figuring out how to order the pay-per-view fight when his phone pinged with an incoming text message.

Rodney scooped up his phone. Radek, Miko, or Sam better not be canceling on him.

The message was from John. _What are you doing tonight?_

_Watching the fights._

Rodney poked around the site some more, found the link he needed, and pressed the button to order the fight, paid with PayPal.

_Me too. Can’t be in Evan’s corner tonight - budget constraints and all. Want to watch them with me? I’m supposed to record Evan’s fight against Hanson for posterity and all that._

Rodney imagined sitting beside John on the couch in the loft at the gym where the fighters gathered sometimes to review footage of Jonas Hanson’s prior fights to analyze his technique and strategize. He could tuck in close, feel John’s warmth all along his side, they could share popcorn, maybe they’d reach into the bowl at the same time and their hands would brush and -

 _I already bought the fight on pay per view at my place,_ Rodney typed back.

_Want me to come over? I can set the fight to record here without me._

_If you don’t mind my friends from the lab, you’re welcome._

_I’d love to meet your friends._ John’s response was almost instantaneous.

 _Then come on over._ Rodney’s hands were shaking a bit when he hit send, but the way his heart was pounding was good. He remembered this kind of heart-pounding. This kind of heart-pounding led to soft confessions, _I like you_ , and then hand-holding and kissing.

Rodney dreamed of John Sheppard an embarrassing amount, of holding him and kissing him, of being pinned down by him and -

The doorbell ringing startled Rodney out of his fantasy. He shook himself out and went to answer the door.

“Hey, Sam, Miko, Radek, I -” Rodney broke off. John was standing on his doorstep armed with a bottle of water and a disarming grin.

“Nope, just me.”

“Come on up.” Rodney led John up the stairs, mentally reviewing the state of his apartment. Sure, it was clean enough for his friends, but was it clean enough for John? When they reached the top of the stairs, Rodney hesitated, but then he let John inside, told him to make himself comfortable. Rodney was surprised when Pauli deigned to emerge from the bedroom. He was even more surprised when Pauli went to greet John, rubbed up against John’s ankles and let John pet him.

John kicked off his shoes at the door and sat on the loveseat, curled his legs beneath him.

John looked disarmingly cute when he was barefoot. Rodney cleared his throat and reminded himself to be a good host. “You want anything to eat or drink? I have beer, brownies, popcorn, a fruit tray, chips and dip -”

John brandished his water bottle. “I’m on a strict diet, but thanks.”

“How strict is strict?” Rodney asked. He wasn’t sure where to sit. He usually sat on the loveseat where John was sitting. There was enough room on the couch for Miko and Sam, and Radek could sit in the armchair, everyone’s personal space maintained. Rodney remembered the way Evan and John slithered all over each other on the mats and thought maybe fighters abandoned their sense of personal space after a while.

“I count calories more closely than a supermodel,” John said.

“Well, if you need more water, let me know.” Rodney smiled tightly. He hovered in the kitchen, unsure of what to do with himself. He let John have the remote, control the television till the pre-show began. He was surprised but pleased when John turned on a program about dark energy. John settled back to watch. He looked young, boyishly pleased with the blue light playing across his face.

The doorbell rang again, and Rodney hurried down the stairs to answer it, relieved. Miko, Sam, and Radek were clustered on the doorstep together, Miko with mochi, Sam with cheesecake, Radek with cream cheese kolaches.

“They’re broadcasting a special on dark energy on the Discovery Channel,” Radek said as they headed up the stairs. “It should end right before the pre-show begins.”

“Wow, Rodney,” Miko said, stepping into the den. “Your place is super cute!”

“Thanks. I, uh, decorated it myself,” Rodney said.

“Oh hey, you’re playing the documentary.” Radek set the tray of kolaches on the kitchen counter and sank into the armchair. “Excellent!”

Sam put the cheesecake in the fridge, and Miko added her mochi to the buffet layout.

“So,” Sam said, “how do you fancy Evan Lorne’s chances for real?”

“He’s going to win because he’s too beautiful to lose,” Miko said firmly.

She and Sam plopped down on the couch.

And noticed John at the same time.

Miko’s glasses went very wide behind her glasses.

Sam cleared her throat. “Rodney, you didn’t say you had extra company coming over.”

Rodney cringed under her steely gaze. “I, uh, it was a last-minute thing. John’s recording the fights for, uh, posterity, but he didn’t want to watch alone, so -”

Miko recovered fastest. “Why aren’t you in Vegas with everyone else?”

“Budget issues.” John shrugged. “Evan has Ronon and Jack in his corner, and that should be enough. Too many voices in the mix are unhelpful, actually.” He leaned over and offered a hand to Miko. “We’ve never officially met, but I’m John Sheppard.”

“Miko Kusanagi,” she said.

“Ah, John, this is Samantha Carter - Sam - and Radek Zelenka. They work at the lab with me.” Rodney cleared his throat. “Drinks, anyone?”

“Beer,” Radek said.

Miko agreed.

“Pleased to meet you,” Sam said. She cast Rodney a knowing look.

“Same.” John smiled. “Rodney’s told me a lot about you.”

At Radek’s raised eyebrows, John added, “Don’t worry, it’s all been good.”

“So,” Radek said, “are you interested in dark energy?”

“Immensely.” John sipped some of his water. He reached up, brushed his fingers over the visible edges of his tattoo. “I designed this tattoo based on a pattern from a graph of a harmonic oscillator. It’s broken up and sections are mirrored, I added some spikes, but -”

“It’s beautiful,” Miko blurted out.

John ducked his head and blushed. “Thanks. I - I’ve never told anyone that before. Most people wouldn’t understand.”

“We totally would.” Sam smiled. Then she leaned in, expression serious. “So, really, how do you rate Evan’s odds?”

John said, his expression perfectly serious, “Evan is going to win. He’s too beautiful to lose.”

Miko blushed.

“But seriously,” John said, “he worked hard, and I think he can take Hanson on.”

“Good,” Sam said.

Rodney raised his eyebrows, surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

“We were engaged once,” Sam said. “He cheated on me. I hope Evan kicks his ass.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that on.” John actually reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

The pre-show began, the weigh ins and the walk-ins and the videos of the fighters talking tough about each other, histories of grudge matches or failures and triumphs. John told them the dirty little secrets about weigh-ins, the brutality of cutting weight, the smack talk and gossip in the locker rooms, and also how little animosity actually existed between a lot of the fighters. He told them about different fighters’ pre-fight rituals and the superstitions each of them had. It was fascinating. Miko, Sam, and Radek drank down the details eagerly.

Once drinks and snacks were distributed, Rodney had no choice but to sit down. He eyed Miko and Sam. Miko caught his gaze and deliberately sprawled out a bit more, so there was no way he could fit himself on the couch between her and Sam.

So he sat on the loveseat beside John, carefully not touching him.

When the fights finally began, Rodney was surprised at how into it John was. After the last fight night, Rodney was prepared for the way his friends screamed at the screen, but it was like John was in one of the fighter’s corners, shouting advice and encouragement. What was interesting for Rodney to see was how, after fights that came to decision, before the judges made their decision, John had a radically different perspective from Sam, Miko, and Radek about how well each fighter had done and who’d won. Rodney knew his friends were much more knowledgeable about the sport than he was, but he hadn’t appreciated how observant John was, how good his eyes were, how much he saw in what looked to Rodney like a vicious flail of limbs.

The big event, of course, was Evan Lorne versus Jonas Hanson. Hanson walked out first. His walk-out song was Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. And Evan’s was…

California Dreaming.

“Really?” Rodney asked, disbelieving. It was such a peaceful song, a happy song. Certainly not a fight song.

Miko and Sam were swaying back and forth and waving invisible lighters. A lot of people in the arena were waving their cell phones, flashlights illuminated.

“He’s from California.” John shrugged.

The camera zoomed in on Teyla in the stands, Ronon and Jack in Evan’s corner. The commentator mentioned John in an offhand comment, how he was probably back at Atlantis Gym recording the fight for study purposes and wondering whether the pressure on John would be greater or lesser, if Evan won or lost.

“If Lorne wins, then the pressure’s on for Sheppard to complete the superfecta of title holders all in one gym,” one commentator said.

The other added, “But if Lorne loses, then the pressure’s on for Sheppard to make it a trifecta at least, restore his gym’s honor.”

Rodney snorted. “This isn’t feudal Japan.”

But John was leaning forward, fidgeting the cap of his water bottle. He was nervous, Rodney realized.

Rodney nudged John gently. “Lorne’s going to win, remember? He’s too pretty to lose.”

John cracked a smile, and Rodney felt warmth bloom in his chest. He’d made John smile.

The match between Evan and Hanson was intense. It started off the way John’s fight had, with them circling each other, establishing optimal striking distance, testing each other’s boundaries. Hanson was taller, leaner than Evan, had better reach, but Evan was broader across the chest and shoulders, stockier, and Rodney winced at the mere thought of taking a punch from Evan full-force. They swiped at each other, tested each other. Hanson landed a couple of hits that made John frown, but Evan had fast kicks, picked at Hanson’s front leg like John did.

Once they’d established boundaries, it got aggressive, fast. Not as fast and vicious as Ronon and Teal’c’s fight had been, but fluid, smooth, with them advancing and retreating. The fight flowed and might have been beautiful, but for the way both men were trying to hurt each other.

“Round’s almost done,” Sam said, worrying at her bottom lip.

And Hanson shot. Evan crashed to the floor with a thump that had everyone in the arena wincing, and then Hanson was on top of him. Ronon and Jack screamed from the corner.

John about came unglued. “Dammit, Evan, he’s going for side control and a kimura! Don’t let him do it! Just like we practiced, come on! Slip out of it!” He was almost falling off the edge of the loveseat, straining to be heard, eyes wide.

The commentators noted that Hanson was going for a tried and true tactic, that he’d used it on a previous opponent who’d refused to tap and a dislocated shoulder had been the result.

And then something happened that Rodney didn’t quite understand. Evan wriggled, and he heaved, and he was on top, and he was in side control, and he was slamming a knee into Hanson’s ribs over and over again until the timer buzzed and the ref jumped between them.

John pumped his fists in the air and sank back. “Yes!” He grabbed Rodney in a rough one-armed hug and then leaned in to watch the slow-mo replays of the highlights of that first round.

“I didn’t think he’d get out of that,” Radek said.

“We’ve been drilling that escape,” John said. “Hell yeah!”

“So you think that round went to Evan?” Miko asked.

John pressed his lips into a thin line. “Even though that last escape was good, I think it went to Hanson. He was more aggressive, more of his strikes connected.”

“No one’s ever lasted more than three rounds with Hanson,” Sam said.

“Let’s see if _he_ can last more than three rounds.” Miko went and got some more mochi and then resumed her spot on the couch.

“Are you live-Tweeting this?” Radek looked amused.

“Many of my online friends are dedicated members of Lornutopia,” she said. “We’re all watching this together.”

John made a noise. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Lornutopia,” Miko said. “It’s what Evan’s fandom is called. There’s Ronon’s Dexters, Lornutopia, Teyla’s Mogs, and Sheppard’s Herd. Didn’t you know?”

“No,” John said slowly. “I mean I knew we had fans, but not that they had collective names.”

Miko said proudly, “We have t-shirts.”

“Next round’s starting.” Radek pulled his knees up to his chest and gnawed on the cuffs of his sleeves when he got nervous. One of his cuffs was already damp and riddled with teeth marks.

The second round looked as vicious as the first, but Evan was more aggressive, snapping kicks at Hanson’s front leg over and over again. Hanson took advantage of his longer reach, landing punches on Evan’s body, but Evan at least defended his head.

“How come all of you don’t have brain damage?” Rodney demanded when Hanson slung another hook punch at Evan’s head.

“Actually, MMA fighters suffer fewer concussions and less brain damage over their careers than boxers, even though boxers wear bigger gloves,” John said. He cheered when Evan landed a pretty good punch. “A boxer can be knocked out multiple times in a fight before the fight is won. Match ends as soon as someone is KO in MMA.”

Rodney was glad, because John had a wonderful mind, and Rodney would hate to see it ruined.

The second round was a draw, by John’s opinion. Third round went to Hanson. Sam and Miko were eating cheesecake out of the pie dish with a pair of forks, glued to the screen, while the commentators talked about how Evan was breaking a record, was going to that legendary fourth round with Hanson that no one else had ever made it to.

According to John, in this fourth round Hanson was gassing out, but Evan, who’d been determined to last for five rounds if necessary, had better energy. Rodney almost didn’t believe it, but then he saw it - Hanson faltered, blinked, looked exhausted. And Evan lunged. Took Hanson to the ground, climbed on top of him -

Radek exclaimed in Czech. “This is madness! He’s going to do it!”

The crowd was shouting and cheering. The commentators were talking fast, excited.

“ _In a poetic turn of events, Lorne has gained side control of Hanson and is going for a kimura, Hanson’s signature move. Hanson’s fighting it, he’s slippery, he’s smart on the ground - but ow, there it is, Lorne’s got it locked in. And it happens! Hanson taps!”_

The crowd went wild. Radek fell out of his chair he cheered so hard. Sam and Miko hugged each other and almost upset the cheesecake dish. John actually jumped up and did a little victory lap around the den, then plopped back down on the loveseat beside Rodney and grabbed his hand, squeezed.

On screen, the ref had separated Evan and Hanson. Evan offered Hanson a hand, but Hanson shook his head, swatted Evan’s hand aside, and the crowd booed.

“That’s poor sportsmanship,” Rodney said. Teyla, Jack, and Ronon clambered into the ring to hug Evan. Teyla gave Evan a t-shirt with the Atlantis Gym logo, and then the ref was declaring Evan the winner.

The Emcee interviewed him first. Evan was breathing hard, blinking blood and sweat out of his eyes. Evan managed a passably coherent answer about training hard and studying hard and fighting hard, how he knew if he made it to the fourth round he could win.

Hanson’s post-fight comment was surly and barely coherent. He was wearing a t-shirt and one of the guys from his corner was icing his shoulder.

“So,” Miko said, looking at John, “is the pressure on? For you to complete the superfecta?”

“Not quite yet. This is still Evan’s moment.” John fished his cell phone out of his pocket and typed away madly. Then he called Evan and left a congratulatory voicemail, and finally he flopped back, gazed up at the ceiling.

“Man,” he said, “he won! I knew it! I knew focusing on that kimura would pay off.” He tilted his head and smiled and Rodney. “And you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Rodney, who hadn’t realized that every single different way to permanently mess up another person’s elbow or shoulder had a name, looked indignant. “I understand study and hard work, thank you very much. I didn’t get my two PhDs by looking pretty.”

John raised his eyebrows, sat up straighter. “Two PhDs?”

“Yes,” Rodney said. “Physics and engineering.”

John whistled. “That is hard work.”

“Well,” Radek said, picking himself up off the floor. “Thanks for having us over, Rodney. My place next time, all right? And John, you are welcome, of course, if you wish it. It’s time for me to get home, though. Must check on my nephews.”

Sam and Miko made similar excuses, Sam to check on her boyfriend, Miko to catch up with the other members of Lornutopia.

“Don’t worry, keep the dishes,” Sam said. “Bring them on Monday.”

“Of course,” Rodney said, baffled. “I’ll make sure to wash them.” Usually they stayed for the after-show, watched the slow-mo replays and best of fight moments and the interviews and calculated the force each fighter rocked behind a direct punch. And yet here they were, leaving early, like middle schoolers with a curfew.

And then Rodney realized. John was still holding his hand, hadn’t let go.

The others showed themselves out, and Rodney and John stayed on the couch, fingers entwined, staring at the television.

John squeezed Rodney’s hand briefly. “Is this all right?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” Rodney said, just as softly.

“Good, because I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time.”

Rodney smiled at him tentatively. “I’ve wanted -”

John leaned closer. “What do you want, Rodney?”

“Kiss me?”

Kissing John Sheppard was better than Rodney had dreamed. John’s lips were warm and soft. His hand cupping Rodney’s jaw was gentle, his fingers curled at the nape of Rodney’s neck were tentative. The rasp of stubble against Rodney’s skin sent a jolt through him, and he wound his arms around John, pulled him closer.

Eventually they had to break apart for air, chests heaving.

“Wow.” John smiled, small and sweet and happy. “That was -”

“Kind of amazing,” Rodney said.

John leaned in, pressed a soft kiss to Rodney’s mouth. “I could stay here all night, but on top of a rigorous diet, I have a rigorous sleep and training schedule, and now that Evan’s done with his fight, I’m next up on the block, so…”

“You could sleep here,” Rodney said, and hated how needy he sounded.

John chuckled. “If I stayed here, we wouldn’t sleep a wink, and I - I want to take this slow. I want to do this right.”

“We’ve been walking home together once a week for a couple of months now,” Rodney said.

“That was as friends. Maybe friends who wanted more, but still friends,” John said. “Now we’re more than friends, right?”

Rodney’s heartbeat roared in his ears, but he gazed into John’s eyes and nodded. “Yes. We are.”

John smiled again. “Good. Now, I’d better go. Good night, Rodney.” He darted in for one more kiss, leaped off the loveseat, and went to get his shoes.

“Good night, John,” Rodney said, a little dazed and stunned. It wasn’t until John was down the stairs and out the front door and the buzzer on Rodney’s intercom let him know the front door had auto-locked that he realized.

John had kissed him. And they were more than friends.

Rodney didn’t know what to do. He wanted to curl up in bed and relive the sensation of those kisses over and over again, savor the warmth of this new knowledge. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

He settled on sending a text message to his sister.

_Hey Jeannie, I think I have a boyfriend now._

She didn’t respond till the next morning, time differences and all. _What do you mean, you ‘think’? Either you have a boyfriend or you don’t._

_He kissed me and we agreed to be more than friends._

_As in friends with benefits or dating exclusively?_

Rodney didn’t know. And he fretted. He fretted all weekend, almost booted up Google a hundred times to see who John had dated in the past, if he was openly gay (nope, there were no openly gay male MMA fighters, a few female ones, and that was as far as Rodney got before he felt guilty and stalkerish and closed his browser).

He didn’t get an answer until after self-defense the next week.

*

“You know,” John said, lingering on the edge of the mat after class while Rodney put on his shoes, “you need to do more than show up to class once a week to be proficient at self-defense. You need to practice in your spare time.”

“Miko and Sam practice with each other, but I’d be a bit of a third wheel,” Rodney said.

“Well,” John said, “I’d be willing to practice with you.”

Rodney pushed himself to his feet. They’d worked on escapes from strangleholds that night, and his neck was a little sore. “Don’t you have, I don’t know, intense training things to do?”

While Evan was recovering from his win against Hanson, he was helping Teyla and Daniel teach self-defense as a kind of ‘light duty’ till he was ready to get back into regular training, and Jack’s focus had switched to John and his upcoming title fight against Cameron Mitchell. That fight was still a few months away, but John had to start preparing now, upping his cardio so he would last five rounds, studying Mitchell’s old fights to develop a new combat strategy.

“If I train more than three hours a day,” John said, “I’m going to wreck myself. A little light training with you will be a good way to wind down at the end of the day. Once training camp picks up next month, I’ll be on the hook for six hours a day, but I need to also do my best to stay relaxed and not over-stress so I’m in peak condition for my title fight.”

He and Rodney left the gym after waving goodbye to Miko and Sam (Miko had been very meek and quiet during class when she got to work with Evan), and they walked down the sidewalk toward Rodney’s place.

“I like to think,” John said lightly, “that spending my free time with my boyfriend will help me stay relaxed, don’t you think?”

“Boyfriend?” Rodney echoed.

John frowned. “Too high school? Do you prefer lovers or partners or -?”

“Boyfriend is good for now,” Rodney said, then, feeling bold, added, “I thought lovers had sex, anyway.”

“We’ll get there, I promise.” John smiled at him, sultry and wicked. “And when we do, it’ll be awesome. In the meantime, what do you say? We just hang out on Mondays, we practice on Tuesdays, you have class on Wednesday, we practice on Thursday, Friday night is date night, and we do whatever we want on the weekend?”

“You really are big into strict schedules, aren’t you?” Rodney said.

“That wasn’t an answer to my question.”

“Seeing as how my social life before you consisted of me and Pauli making fun of bad science in journal articles, spending time with you, my boyfriend, however rigidly scheduled, would be lovely,” Rodney said.

“Good.”

Instead of dropping Rodney off at the door, John followed him up the stairs to his actual apartment door, and he leaned in for a slow, lingering kiss.

“Good night, Rodney,” John said. “I’ll meet you after work tomorrow night, all right? We can practice at the gym together.”

“Good night,” Rodney said, a little breathlessly, and then, “text me when you get home so I know you made it safe!”

It was exactly the thing his sister would say, but he didn’t care. Rodney had been mugged out on that street. John wasn’t immune to crazy muggers. Anyone who didn’t immediately recognize his crazy hair or glimpse his tattoo would think he was a slender, wiry guy who might be an easy target.

As insane as John’s scheduling tendencies were, Rodney actually really liked having a routine, especially since that routine involved lots and lots of time with John in the evenings. On Mondays, they went back to Rodney’s place, and Rodney learned to cook food that John could eat, which forced Rodney to eat healthy, and they’d watch documentaries on the Discovery Channel or turn on a favorite album and make out leisurely on the couch till John had to get to bed. (In addition to training at the gym every day, he ran every morning.) On Tuesdays and Thursdays they’d spend an hour at the gym, practicing the self-defense techniques Rodney had learned in times past, random ones, with emphasis on the ones learned in the last class, then have dinner at either one of their apartments.

Where Rodney abhorred violence, still felt bad when he looked at Evan and saw his fading bruises or imagined John getting pummeled by Cameron Mitchell, Rodney understood why John liked martial arts. Where Evan had grown up doing jujitsu, Teyla had grown up doing escrima, and Ronon had grown up doing some martial art native to his home islands, John had grown up doing karate, partially because his father, some military officer, had been stationed in Japan for a while, and partially because he’d watched The Karate Kid. Rodney was used to his mind doing what he wanted, when he wanted, working at a mile a minute, switching from calculations to formulae to theories at a moment’s notice as needed. His body was just a vessel for his mind, two legs and two arms to get his mind to where it was needed most.

But working with John taught him that his body could occasionally do what he wanted, when he wanted it to. And sometimes it would do what he needed it to do without him thinking about it. John grabbed his wrist, Rodney twisted out of it without a thought. And he got it. He got that zen feeling people made fun of, when he and his body were one and he wasn’t thinking, was just feeling. It was like when he was brainstorming for a new approach to the zero-point energy problem. He stepped back from it all, let his mind whirl, and he saw an answer. Now, in a fight, he could step back from it all, let his mind still, and his body had the answer.

It felt amazing.

And then one Friday night, after dinner and a movie at John’s place, they were tangled on John’s sinfully comfortable couch, kissing boldly, hands sliding under each other’s shirts.

“Stop thinking,” John whispered. “Don’t think about the next move, the next kiss. Just kiss me, and go with it.”

Rodney nodded. “Okay.” It took him a moment to get into that zen place, but then all he knew was John’s mouth and hands and tongue and a delicious scrape of teeth, and when he came back to normal speed, mind spinning, he was sprawled back on the couch, John kneeling between his spread thighs and licking his lips, grinning up at Rodney triumphantly.

“That - you just -” Rodney blinked.

“Yeah, I did,” John said. His shirt was gone, and Rodney could see every line, every curve of his muscles, of his tattoo.

“Well,” Rodney said, “you need to relax and de-stress, right? Sexual frustration can’t be good for you.”

“It’s never killed a man,” John began, but Rodney tugged him up onto the couch, pinned him down, and started exploring John’s bare skin, his pretty tattoo.

“I’d be a bad boyfriend if I were remiss in reciprocating,” Rodney said, and John laughed breathily.

“Maybe I was remiss, if you can still use big words like that.”

Rodney silenced him with a kiss, with curious hands, and then he set out to do as he’d always wanted to, tracing John’s tattoo with his lips and tongue and teeth. John writhed prettily beneath him, and even though Rodney had just come, he was incredibly turned on by the fact that John’s tattoo was secretly a graph of a harmonic oscillator, and -

He paused. He closed his eyes, and he could see it, the graph that John’s tattoo formed. He could see the formula that described it, and there, the thing that had always been on the tip of his tongue, was finally words.

One word.

“Eureka.”

Rodney sat up, straightened himself up, zipped up his pants, fumbled for his shirt.

John blinked at him. “Rodney?”

“I’ve figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

Rodney leaned down and kissed him, deep and thorough. “Zero-point energy. All thanks to you and your beautiful, beautiful body.” He kissed John again. “I have to get to the lab. Gotta go. Love you!”

And he was out the door and down the street, clutching his shoes and socks and jacket like a bad walk of shame, only he was running, and fumbling with his keys to get the lab door open, and then he was in front of his computer, and he wasn’t sure what happened next.

When he woke up, he was slumped over at his desk. The whiteboards were covered with formula, there was a sketch of the harmonic oscillator graph that had started everything tacked to the wall, and some kind of simulation was playing itself out over and over again.

“Rodney, are you all right?” Sam shook his shoulder. Miko and Radek stood beside her, concerned.

“John called me,” Sam said. “Said you hadn’t been answering your phone all weekend, and then it started going straight to voicemail.”

Miko wrinkled her nose. “When did you shower last?”

Rodney blinked, stared at them. “I...what happened?”

“It’s Monday,” Sam said. “You ran out on your date with John on Friday. What have you been doing?”

Radek peered at the simulation on Rodney’s screen. “Is this what I think it is?”

Rodney smiled smugly. “Yes. It is.”

And then Rodney wasn’t the only mad scientist staying at the lab twenty-four seven. They photographed the whiteboard with the formulae on it, then erased it and attacked it again with new markers (blue for Rodney, red for Sam, green for Radek, purple for Miko).

It was Woolsey, of all people who came by for a spot inspection on Wednesday, who told them to slow down. Was he very impressed and pleased with their breakthrough? Yes. Did he want them to go home and shower and relax so they could tackle the upcoming hurdles in a rational fashion? Also yes.

“Go home,” he said.

“But -” Rodney had built a comfy pallet in the corner of the laser lab underneath the one laser.

“Home,” Woolsey snapped, pointing at the door.

So they all shuffled for the door even though it was only two PM - they’d been there since 8 AM on Monday - and they went to their respective homes.

It was strange, walking home in the middle of the day, walking home alone.

And Rodney remembered.

John. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone, but it was dead. He hurried home, plugged it in, and then curled up on the couch beside it with Pauli, waiting for it to charge up enough so he could call John.

He’d just about fallen asleep when his cell phone pinged and he saw a series of missed calls, text messages, and voicemails. Most from John. Some from Sam. A couple from Miko and Radek. One from Jeannie.

He read John’s text messages, which started off amused and a little frustrated ( _way to leave a guy hanging_ ) and got increasingly worried ( _did something happen in the lab? Are you ok?_ ). John’s voicemail messages followed about the same tone. He wasn’t answering his phone. Sam, Miko, and Radek didn’t know where he was. Rodney had missed their Monday date and Tuesday training.

One voicemail message, small and sad and tired from late Tuesday night - oh no, John’s training schedule was going awry, and he fought Mitchell in four weeks! - confused Rodney.

“ _Right before you left, what you said. Did you mean it?_ ”

Of course Rodney meant it. He’d finally figured out how to access zero-point energy. The issue now would be figuring out how to store it and transfer it and generally harness it. He’d said what he always swore he’d say when he finally found the answer: _Eureka._

And then he remembered, the last thing he said as he ran out the door.

_I love you._

He called John back, but John didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t answer; he was in the middle of training camp, was probably on the mats with Ronon and Evan and Teyla right now.

Once John’s voicemail picked up, Rodney said, “Yes. Yes I meant it. I’m so sorry. This is why all my previous relationships failed. When the science gets good I go into laser focus and - I’m sorry. I meant it. I’ll see you tonight, I swear. Woolsey gave all of us the day off.” And then he hung up, and he fell asleep with Pauli purring beside him.

He woke up when his door buzzer sounded. It was dark out. He stumbled across his apartment to the door buzzer, fumbled for it with one hand and for the light switch with the other.

“Hello?”

“Rodney, it’s me. Are you okay?”

“Um. Fell asleep. What time is it?”

“Let me up. I brought food,” John said.

Rodney buzzed John in, and then he opened the door, and when the smell of gyros from his favorite Greek take out place hit him, he realized he was starving. When had he last eaten? He remembered they’d ordered out for some pierogi from that one Polish place Radek liked even though he wasn’t Polish. Wait. Was that yesterday?

John emerged from the darkness of the stairwell - Rodney had forgotten to turn on the light in the hallway - and the mere sight of him was enough to undo Rodney. Rodney tugged him into the apartment, plucked the food from him (takeout plus stuff John’s strict diet allowed for) and set it on the counter. Then he tugged John into a hug and held him. Reveled in the scent of his skin - musky from training all day, no doubt - and his warmth and his solidness and how real he was.

“I missed you,” John said. “I was worried about you. I got your voicemail. I -”

“I meant it. I still mean it,” Rodney said. “ _I love you._ ” And he leaned up and kissed John.

They never did get to the food that evening, but they did finally get completely naked together in Rodney’s bed. Rodney’s sleep schedule was messed up, and the three rounds it took them to be finally satisfied that they’d established a good foundation about what the other liked in bed ruined John’s sleep schedule, but it was so, so worth it. Just before Rodney fell asleep in the dawn light, John snuggled close and whispered, “I love you.”

 

*

Rodney was rudely awakened from his post-coital slumber with John when John’s phone rang.

John moaned, fumbled for it with one hand, disrupting Rodney’s use of his chest as a pillow. John’s heartbeat was soothing.

“H’lo?” John mumbled.

Jack’s voice exploded from the phone. “Sheppard, it’s seven AM and me, Ronon, Evan, and Teyla are down at the gym waiting to train with you so you can kick Mitchell’s ass. Where the hell are you?”

John swore and sat bolt upright in one fluid movement. Rodney blinked sleepily. Hey. Nice abs. He patted John’s belly fondly.

“I am so sorry, I must have overslept. I'll be right there.” John went tumbling out of Rodney’s bed, taking his warmth and half of the covers with him.

“Overslept?” Jack snarled. “That means you stayed up late. What the hell are you thinking?”

“I think he was getting lucky, boss,” Ronon said in the background.

“Ronon!” Teyla cried, scandalized.

Evan cackled. “Pay up, Teyla.”

“I don’t care if you had the best orgasm in the universe,” Jack snapped. “You have a title to win. You get your ass down here and you get it down here now or I’m coming down there and kicking your boyfriend’s door in.”

John was in his clothes in record speed. He leaned over, kissed Rodney, murmured _I love you,_ and was out the front door like a shot, saying, “I'm on my way. Out the door right now. I promise!”

Rodney sighed unhappily and hauled the blankets back up onto the bed, snuggled down with them. Pauli deigned to join him, and together they were about to go back to sleep and ignore the world when Rodney's phone went off.

It was Woolsey.

“McKay, get in here and get in here now.”

“What? Why? Lab opens at eight,” Rodney mumbled.

“Carter figured out a way to isolate a pocket of sub space, and now we need to figure out a way to contain it. The backers are sending over a materials chemist to help you find the answer. Shen went above my head and promised the backers results in three months.”

“Three months?” That jolted Rodney out of his happy drowsiness. “That's insane.”

“I know. I have to do some fast talking. In the meantime, get down here, pronto.”

Rodney tumbled out of bed and ran for the shower. Pauli mewled indignantly.

Rodney at least remembered to grab the leftover Greek food before he headed out the door. Three months to get a working prototype was insane.

 

*

For the next four weeks, he and John barely saw each other. They traded text messages, but Woolsey had them all working long hours in the lab, so there was no more dates and no more self defense class. Jack was so pissed off at John for screwing up his sleep schedule that he had Evan on his six almost twenty-four seven to ensure he adhered to the monastic lifestyle required of him to ensure his success against Mitchell. All Rodney had energy for was working on his project, missing John, and feeding Pauli.

Dr. Laura Cadman was a brilliant chemist, had started out as an explosives expert and somehow stumbled upon a substance that contained the blasts of some of her experimental explosives. She joined the team with aplomb, rolled up her sleeves and dove straight into the work. She fell into the pattern of early mornings and late nights with the rest of them, paid for her share of the takeout they ate at their desks while they theorized and brainstormed.

Some kind of crystalline structure seemed like the best option, but they had yet to find one that even came close to the specs that the simulations said they’d need. As long as they had a substance that met the simulation specs, they would meet the ridiculous deadline that Shen Xiaoyi had promised the money bags.

The days got longer, the nights got shorter, and everyone started sleeping at the lab. Rodney realized he hadn't seen John in a week right around the time Laura started doing a victory dance on her chair.

“Got it!” She jumped up and ran over to the printer, grabbed the printout from the machine, and thrust it under Rodney’s nose. His eyes were swimming, so he had to blink a few times.

And then he saw it. The numbers matched on Sam’s specs to capture a pocket of subspace and the crystalline structure Laura had theorized to contain it.

“Is...is this real?” Rodney asked.

Laura nodded.

“Have you told Sam?”

“I just barely -”

“Sam! Sam, get in here!” Rodney shouted.

Sam stumbled into the lab. She was pale and drawn, her eyes were bloodshot, and she looked tired. “What, Rodney?”

He thrust the piece of paper at her. “Laura did it. She did it!”

Sam accepted the paper, blinked at slowly. And then her eyes went wide. She yanked Laura into a crushing hug. “You did it!”

Radek poked his head into the room. “Did what?”

What ensued as a tangle of limbs in breath-stealing, rib-cracking hugs and back slaps, champagne spilling everywhere from Miko’s secret stash, and four scientists who’d eaten too little and slept too little and worked too much and drank too much and were giggling, silly drunk when Woolsey arrived.

He stood in the doorway, staring at them in dismay. “What in heaven’s name is going on here?”

Rodney waved the champagne-damp piece of paper at him. “Laura did it. She figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” Woolsey asked, accepting the paper gingerly.

“How to contain Sam’s pocket of subspace,” Rodney said.

Woolsey’s eyes went wide. He started making a series of phone calls, including a scathing but triumphant one to Shen, and in between phone calls to their financial backers he called cabs to take each of them home.

Rodney sent a text message to John. _Eureka. I love you._ And then he rewarded himself with a long soak in the bath, some episodes of Star Trek while he ate take-out Greek food, and crawling into bed with Pauli by his side.

He missed John, but the madness was over. After he slept, he’d get to see John again, and life would be perfect.

 

*

When Rodney woke, something was wrong. He wasn’t in bed. Pauli was gone. The world was moving. Someone was crammed close beside him. He opened his eyes slowly. He was in a car. The person crammed close beside him was Radek.

No, he wasn’t in a car, he was in a van. He, Radek, and Sam were crammed into the back seat of the van. Teyla, Daniel, and Ronon were crammed into the middle seat. Evan was driving, and Miko was riding shotgun.

“What’s going on?”

“Good morning.” Evan sounded far too cheerful. “You’ve been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” Rodney echoed.

“Yeah. Scientists are lightweights. You snored through the entire process,” Ronon said.

“My parents are dead and even if they weren’t, they’d never pay a ransom.” Rodney frowned at the damp spot on his shoulder where Radek had been drooling. He shifted carefully so he was sitting upright, did his best not to disturb Radek.

Teyla frowned at him. “That is very sad, Rodney.”

“Hardly. They were spiteful when they weren’t being self-absorbed, and the world is better off without them. Is there any chance I could get some coffee?” Rodney swore he could smell the stuff.

Miko dug around near her feet, then came up with a giant steel thermos. She poured him a mug, and Daniel passed it back to him.

“Thank you.” Rodney inhaled the scent for a moment, reveling, before he took that first blessed sip. He clutched the warm mug to warm his hands and sighed happily. “So, really, what’s going on?”

“John is fighting tonight,” Teyla said, “and we are all going to watch him.”

Rodney blinked. “Tonight?”

Miko turned around and nodded eagerly. “Yes! Live!”

“Aren’t tickets usually prohibitively expensive?” Rodney asked.

“Well, this time the venue is within driving distance,” Ronon said, “and Miko told Evan that you guys had a huge breakthrough at the lab, so consider this your celebration.”

“I thought the champagne was the celebration.” Rodney blinked some more. “Wait, Miko told Evan?” He stared, a little dazed, as Evan reached out and squeezed Miko’s hand. “Oh.” After another fortifying sip of coffee, Rodney’s brain sped up. “Wait, where are we staying? Where even is the fight?”

“Don’t worry,” Daniel said. “Evan has it all under control.”

They were staying at a really fancy hotel across the street from the fight venue in Denver. Rodney had his own room. Teyla was sharing a room with Sam and Miko. Radek was sharing a room with Ronon and Evan. Daniel had a room of his own, and Rodney had a room of his own.

With only one bed. A really nice giant California king bed.

Someone in the Atlantis Gym kidnapping ring had gotten into Rodney’s apartment and packed him an overnight bag, which was both thoughtful and a little invasive (he hoped it was Evan or Ronon who’d done it and not Teyla). Rodney barely had a chance to shower and change before someone knocked at the door.

Everyone else was arrayed on the other side of the door, dressed nicely and looking bright, relaxed, happy.

“Let’s go get dinner,” Evan said, “and then it’s fight time.”

During dinner, Evan, Ronon, Daniel, and Teyla explained that weigh-ins had happened three days ago, and pretty much every other fighter was doing his or her best to recover from the sharp weight cut that happened before weigh-in.

“Isn’t that really dangerous, from a health perspective?” Rodney asked. He thought about how slender John was, how lean. He couldn’t afford to cut weight.

“It can be.” Ronon shrugged. “Happens all the time in sports. For any sport divided by weight class, like wrestling or boxing. For jockeys in horse racing, too.”

“So a guy like Mitchell,” Daniel said, “who weighs in at a hundred and seventy pounds probably has a walking around weight of a hundred and eighty or ninety pounds.”

Rodney’s appetite vanished. “But John -”

“Jack’s pretty unusual, in that he doesn’t like weight-cutting. Takes some of the shine out of the sport.” Evan was packing away food like no one’s business. Wasn’t he on some kind of strict diet? Weren’t all of the fighters? “After all, if everyone cuts weight, no one goes into the ring at the top of their game. Jack insists we be at the top of our game.”

“So Mitchell actually weighs twenty more pounds than John?” Rodney sat back, mind spinning. He was a physicist. He knew how much force an extra twenty pounds could contribute to a strike, especially with the speed he’d seen in Mitchell’s fight videos. That was Mitchell at less than his best?

“John has trained very carefully.” Teyla patted Rodney’s shoulder. “He will fight well tonight, win or lose.”

“The pressure’s definitely on him to win, though, right?” Radek asked.

“Has anyone ever died in an MMA fight?” Rodney asked.

“Yes,” Evan said.

Rodney swallowed hard.

“Never in an official UFC fight,” Evan continued. “There are pre-fight physicals and strict rules and well-trained refs to protect us fighters. But in smaller franchises with less oversight, or in unsanctioned matches, yes, people have died.”

“You’re scaring him,” Miko said, and she patted Rodney’s shoulder gently.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Sam murmured.

Evan leaned across the table. “Rodney, John’s going to be fine. As the person at this table most recently in a ring for a fight, I can assure you that John will come out of this relatively unharmed. No more harmed than usual, at any rate.”

“But you said -” Rodney shook his head and closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths. “I - can I talk to him? Between rounds?”

Evan glanced at Teyla and Ronon, who nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Jack and I will be in John’s corner for coaching, but if you want to help monitor John between rounds, that can be arranged. Of course, you’ll need to wear an official t-shirt.”

“Official t-shirt?” Rodney echoed. Everyone was dressed nicely.

“We dressed for dinner,” Evan said, “but for the walk-out and the actual fight, jeans and t-shirts are best. After all, those fighters get really sweaty and sometimes a little bloody, and you don’t want that all over your nice clothes, right?”

“Right,” Rodney said faintly.

Miko smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll hook you up. I’ve got all the t-shirts.”

They finished eating dinner, and then they headed across the street to the arena. Thousands of fans were lined up at the doors to get inside, but Evan led everyone around to a side door, flashed his badge at one of the massive security guards, and they were let into the back. Evan, Teyla, and Ronon navigated ‘backstage’ with ease. It was a labyrinth of cement corridors with harsh fluorescent lighting and exposed pipes overhead. VIP guests had seats near the front, on level with the octagon so they could see inside, and the chairs were much more comfortable than the bleachers everyone else had to content themselves with. An entire row was set aside for _Atlantis_.

While Miko, Rodney, Radek, and Sam tried to figure out who was sitting where, Evan, Teyla, Ronon, and Daniel mingled with people they knew, including Aiden Ford, Vala Mal Doran, Amelia Banks, and Teal’c Chulak. There were wives and girlfriends and husbands and boyfriends in the VIP section as well. Rodney found himself shaking hands with Amy Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell’s wife. She was sitting beside Mitchell’s mother, and brother. Mitchell’s father was his coach, and he was back in the locker rooms with Mitchell.

“How do you stand it?” Rodney asked. “Watching your husband get hurt.”

“Cam and I are high school sweethearts,” Amy said. “I watched him get sacked on the football field every other week. At least there he wore a lot more protective gear.” She was lovely, had a cute little southern drawl, seemed like a wholesome, all-American girl next door.

Rodney couldn’t begin to guess how Mrs. Mitchell handled watching her son get hurt, though as a general rule Mitchell’s opponents were the ones getting hurt.

In person, a fight arena was much busier than it seemed on TV. Usually Rodney only saw the crowds and the octagon, but now he could see the judges’ table, the commentators’ table, and a row of girls in skimpy outfits who held the number cards for each round. They looked young and nervous and also a little cold in their outfits.

“Most round girls are professional cheerleaders or dancers,” Radek said. “Like Laker girls.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, squared his shoulders, and went to talk to them.

Rodney silently wished him luck.

The doors opened for general admission about halfway through the VIP informal mingling session, and suddenly the stadium was much, much louder. Rodney resorted to text messages to communicate with his friends. Miko and Sam were wide-eyed at all of the famous fighters they were seeing, but there were also other celebrities in the VIP section, actors and models and musicians. Radek hadn’t been dismissed from the round card girls in disgrace, was in fact having an animated discussion with one of them. Miko stuck close to Evan, who proudly introduced her around as his girlfriend, and she ended up in a deep discussion with Amelia Banks about the research going on at the lab. Teyla and Ronon and Daniel introduced Sam and Rodney as friends from the gym, and also friends of Miko’s. Most of the celebrities were personable, kind, didn’t ask too many questions about why non-celebrities and non-relatives were hanging around their section. Mostly they were excited for the fights to start.

Rodney suspected that the noise and boisterousness of the crowds at MMA fights was the way crowds had been for Shakespearean productions back in the day. There was food and drink, conversation and laughter. Not even Evan, Ronon, and Teyla paid very close attention to the undercard fights. Evan was kind enough to explain to Rodney that undercard fighters had to accumulate points and experience to be eligible to participate in more important fights, to move up through the ranks, and so these younger, newer fighters were cutting their teeth.

“They’re good,” Evan said, “and they have room to grow. Future champions are out there, slugging it out now.”

Despite the ebb and flow of conversation, Ronon seemed to be able to keep his finger on the pulse of all the fights, would tune out of a conversation right when a fight was getting good.

For Rodney, a fight was good when the fighters were circling each other, looking for openings, playing mind games. Other people cheered when a fighter landed a vicious hit or kick. There were even louder cheers when blood was shed. Rodney wondered if MMA fights ought to have been likened not to archaic theatre but to gladiator fights in the Colosseum. He winced every time someone was hurt. He saw, for the first time, a ref stop a fight when a fighter had a viciously split brow. Blood was pouring down his face and into his eyes, but he was jittery under his team doctor’s hands, wanted to get out there and finish it.

“It’s the adrenaline,” Sam said. “They’re so hopped up that they’re not thinking straight. Jonas got like that, after fights sometimes.”

Rodney glanced at her. “What will you do, if you run into him here? Pretend Ronon’s your boyfriend or something?”

Sam shook her head, expression derisive. “Just because I’m not longer engaged to Jonas doesn’t mean I need a new man in my life to have moved on and moved up. Rodney, we’ve broken ground on a real, viable sustainable energy solution. That’s way better than a boyfriend.”

Rodney thought of the early mornings and late nights and brief text messages and briefer phone calls he’d had with John and thought a boyfriend was pretty damn awesome, but he didn’t say anything. The rational part of Rodney knew Sam was correct. In the grand scheme of things, their work was worth more than a single person, would benefit the entire planet for generations to come, but the other part of Rodney, the part that liked warmth and happiness and music and petting Pauli, thought John Sheppard was worth the entire world.

Rodney just wasn’t sure if it was worth sitting on this chair, watching people perpetrate physical violence upon each other for money and fame and waiting for John to do the same.

When the main card fights began, the VIP section settled down, especially the fighters and their relatives who were experienced in the sport, people watching more intently. Radek returned from the bench of round card girls, smiling and looking pleased, and informed Sam and Miko that he had a date for Friday night with Mara, a professional cheerleader who had majored in physics before dropping out of college.

Sam and Miko were very pleased for him.

Evan, Ronon, and Daniel screamed advice from their seats like a bunch of angry, overzealous coaches. Unlike football or baseball, there weren’t a lot of people cussing out the refs or challenging their calls. The person who was most vehement in her commentary, though, was Teyla, which surprised everyone in her immediate vicinity. Most of her commentary wasn’t in English, which prompted Radek to text to Rodney,

_Now I know how you feel when I am angry in the lab, yes?_

When Rodney couldn’t handle the violence in the ring, he sent text messages to Jeannie, asked her how her husband Kaleb’s novel was coming along, how Madison was doing at kindergarten that year. He also sent text messages to Laura, who was watching the fights from home - she was also an avid MMA fan and had a standing invitation to all fight nights and had gladly joined the hosting rotation - and kept checking the fight night website online to see who was fighting next.

John’s fight against Mitchell was looming closer and closer.

During one of the pre-fight videos of the two fighters talking smack about each other, voiced over clips of them training (and Rodney had never noticed cameras at the gym when Evan or John were training), Evan leaned over, tapped Rodney on the arm. He beckoned, and Rodney realized that the Mitchells had vanished from the row behind them. Evan led them over to the edge of the arena, to the door that led back to the locker rooms. He, Evan, Radek, Ronon, and Daniel ducked just inside to the bathrooms to change into jeans and sneakers. When they emerged, Miko, Sam, and Teyla were also in jeans and t-shirts. Miko had a shopping bag, from which she distributed t-shirts. She and Sam already had t-shirts and jeans and sneakers on. They had the Atlantis Gym logo on the front, along with a bunch of sponsor logos, and then a slogan on the back, _One of the Herd_. It took Rodney a moment to realize that the spiky insignia above the word _Herd_ was meant to represent John’s hair.

“She has t-shirts for all four of us,” Evan said wryly, and he pressed a kiss to Miko’s hair. Then he explained the walk-out process. Mitchell, as the title holder, got to walk out first. John, as the challenger, walked out second.

Even though fights were scheduled events, there was a lot of fluidity in the schedule, as not every fight was guaranteed to last the full three rounds, or even one round, depending on how the fight went, so it was best to get prepared early for their next fight.

Ronon and Daniel, Rodney realized, where nowhere to be seen. Teyla must have seen his puzzled scanning of the crowd, for she said, “They are already in the back with Jack and John. They will meet us here.”

The next fifteen minutes were the longest of Rodney’s life. The fight ended by submission, the fans cheered, the fighters were escorted back to the locker rooms by their loud and boisterous posses. There was a break for commercials, while the commentators did their thing and the judges stood up to stretch. Rodney jumped when he first heard Mitchell’s voice, and then he craned his neck to peer at the video screens hanging from the ceiling in the center of the arena. Mitchell didn’t really talk smack, mostly talked about how hard he’d worked to get this title and how he’d worked harder still and was going to keep it.

At the sound of John’s voice, Rodney’s heart ached. He talked about how he’d fought long and hard to get where he was, that he’d earned the right to challenge Mitchell for his title, and he intended to take it from him.

Rodney didn’t want John to fight. He wanted to take John home and cuddle on the couch and watch Star Trek and make love till the sun rose. But this was what John loved. This was what made him come alive. John loved fighting like Rodney loved science, and Rodney was going to be here for him no matter what.

Mitchell’s walkout song was Carry On Wayward Son, and the audience was on its feet, singing along, while he walked out from one side of the arena.

“He’s from Kansas,” Evan explained.

Rodney stared up at the big screen where Mitchell grinned and high-fived the people he passed. One of the arena cutmen smoothed vaseline onto Mitchell’s face, one of the refs checked his cup, mouth guard, and gloves, and then Amy leaned in and kissed Mitchell on the cheek before he stepped into the octagon and did a lap. He looked like a nice, down-home kind of guy, probably had the same drawl as Amy. But Rodney had seen his videos, knew that beneath his blue eyes and easy smile he was a combat machine, his body finely-honed for one thing: inflicting damage.

Then the lights went down, and Rodney was blinded for a moment. A hand come down on his shoulder, and he jumped, but then someone began to whistle.

John.

Whistling the opening melody of In Any Tongue. Rodney sucked in a breath and began to whistle too, and the song built, high and sweet in the air, and the lights came up. John stood front and center, wearing his little fight shorts and a t-shirt. His expression was intense, eyes dark, brow furrowed, but his lips were perfectly pursed while he whistled. Rodney wanted to kiss his beautiful mouth. Then John stepped forward, and everyone else - including Jack and Daniel and Ronon - surged forward as one, whistling as they went.

They reached the edge of the arena just as the guitar chords crescendoed, and Jack and Ronon were offering last-minute advice while John got vaseline smeared on his face and checked over, and then he was in the ring. Jack and Ronon took up post in John’s corner. Miko tugged Rodney down onto the bench behind them, where there was a bucket, towels, ice in a cooler, bottles of water, and other necessary fight supplies.

The ref gave his usual speech, a brief review of the rules, asking for a clean fight, asked John and Mitchell to touch gloves, and then -

He had to get the hell out of the way, because as soon as the buzzer sounded, Mitchell was in John’s space, fists flying.

Rodney clutched the bench, eyes wide. Mitchell’s father and brother were in his corner, shouting encouragement.

“That’s right, Cammie, get on him, stay on him!”

John looked like he was getting overwhelmed, but Jack shouted _Angles!_ and John slipped to the side, fed Mitchell a few punches, and what followed was the deadliest dance ever, point and counterpoint, strike for strike. Mitchell was fast and aggressive, but John was quick to slip aside, follow up with counterstrikes, never fewer than three.

The crowd uttered a collective _ooh_ when Mitchell landed a solid-looking punch to John’s body. John snapped a kick at Mitchell’s ribs in return. He barely looked affected by it, but his brother shouted, “It’s okay, Cammie, shake it off!” and Ronon cheered.

Evan, Sam, and Teyla had a running commentary going between them, about how Mitchell was being fast and aggressive, was trying to set John up to take him to the ground, but John was playing his counterstrike game well and had been drilling his takedown defense. Miko and Radek were silent, still, watching the fight with much more rapt attention than they did at home.

If Rodney had thought that fifteen minutes waiting for John’s walk-out was long, the five minutes for the first round were an eternity, during which he half-watched John getting punched and kicked, half got lost in his head envisioning all the ways this could go so wrong.

Mitchell had John up against the fence and was driving a knee into his thigh repeatedly when the buzzer sounded for the end of the round, and the ref broke them up.

Evan surged to his feet. “Come on.” He tugged Rodney with him. Rodney stumbled up into the octagon, where John was sitting on a stool. Evan handed Rodney a towel, and Rodney used it to wipe the sweat off of John as best as possible. Evan had a baggie full of ice and was pressing to to John’s chest and arms. Jack, Daniel, and Ronon crowded close.

“You played your game well,” Jack said, “gave as good as you got, but you’ve been training damn hard to up your game, so in the next round, you need to up your game. When he attacks, counter, but then stay on him. Get that angle, feed him a good hook. Remember, timing and precision wins out over strength. He’s bigger than you, but you’re a better dancer and you know it.”

John nodded, looked a little dazed. He smiled weakly at Rodney, the expression all wrong because of his mouthguard, which he half spat out to accept a mouthful of water from a water bottle Teyla was holding.

“Timing and precision,” Ronon said, and then someone murmured about the time, and Rodney only had the chance to say _Good luck_ before Evan packed up everything and hustled everyone out of the octagon.

Rodney didn’t sit down, stood beside Jack and Ronon at the fence in the corner, watching with wide eyes. He barely noticed as Mara, Radek’s new sweetheart, sashayed around the exterior of the ring with a Round Two card held high. As soon as she was down the steps, the timer sounded, and the ref leaped out from between John and Mitchell.

John struck first, with a snapping kick toward Mitchell’s head, which set him back on his heels, made him wary. He tested a few swipes at John, who was light on his feet, keeping an angle. John went for another side kick, Mitchell dodged and countered with a punch, but they were playing it much more cautiously this time.

“Up the circle, Cammie!” his father shouted.

“Timing and precision!” Jack yelled.

Mitchell went in for a punch. It connected solidly. Rodney closed his eyes.

The crowd went wild.

No, no, no. John was hurt. John -

Ronon, Jack, and Daniel exploded into cheers right next to Rodney’s ear.

His eyes flew open. Mitchell was facedown on the mat while the ref hovered over him.

John was sprawled several feet away on his ass, eyes wide, staring.

Rodney tipped his head back to watch the slow-mo replay on the giant screen above and saw Mitchell swing. That massive punch that had made Rodney close his eyes.

He saw John slide ever so slightly to the side, counter with a punch of his own. It looked like Mitchell’s fist connected with John’s face, but John’s fist connected with Mitchell’s temple, and he went limp and dropped to the mat. John was on him, hammering down on his head for a few seconds till the ref jumped in and pushed him off.

And that was when Rodney had opened his eyes.

Now Mitchell was sitting up against the fence, shaking his head wearily while his father and a medic checked him over. John pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to his corner. He blinked at Jack dazedly.

“Did I just -?”

“You knocked Mitchell out,” Jack said, and he was grinning fiercely.

The door to the octagon swung open, and Amy Mitchell ran to her husband’s side. Ronon and Teyla went tearing up the steps to John, to sweep him into massive hugs, and Evan dragged Rodney into the ring after him.

John had won, no question. They needed the official word from the judges, some officials would bring out the stupid-looking title belt, but Rodney didn’t care, because John had won, and more importantly, John was okay.

Rodney didn’t think. He pushed past Evan and Ronon and Daniel and reached out, tugged John close.

“Don’t you ever, ever scare me like that again,” Rodney said.

John smiled, amused and a little pained. “Oh yeah? What’re you gonna do about it?”

Rodney kissed him.

The arena around them went silent.

And then it roared to life even louder than before, but not everyone was cheering.

Rodney pulled back, realized what he’d done, but John shook his head, tugged him in and kissed him again.

There was a shift, and when John let Rodney up for air, Rodney saw that Evan, Ronon, Teyla, Jack, Daniel, Miko, Sam, and Radek had formed a protective circle around him and John, daring anyone to come close.

It was Mitchell, a little shaky on his feet, who approached.

He smiled tentatively, offered a hand. “Good fight, Sheppard.”

John shook it warily.

And then Mitchell leaned in, kissed Rodney on the cheek, and stepped back.

Rodney emitted a squeak, because up close Mitchell was huge, and he was sweaty and scary, but then Jack reached out and yanked Daniel into a kiss, and huh, that certainly didn’t look like the first time they’d kissed.

The crowd’s noise had softened to an angry murmur, and Rodney pressed close to John, nervous, nervous in a way he hadn’t been since that first night after he was mugged, when he stepped out the door to walk home alone.

But when the judges made their decision and John was given his belt, a good number of the fans cheered loudly, defiantly. Rodney was very confused with Amy Mitchell gave him a hug, but she smiled at him, and he realized she was telling him she understood how he felt, that it was hard to watch someone she loved face physical peril.

Additional venue security arrived to escort them back into the locker rooms, where they were met with awkward silence.

Some men looked away from John and Rodney when they stepped into the locker room, and one man spat at Rodney’s feet, which resulted in Ronon, Evan, and Jack almost jumping on him, but his friends restrained him and Daniel pushed John in the direction of the showers - they had private stalls, thankfully - and then he told Rodney to go wait with Miko, Sam, and Teyla while John had his post-fight check-up.

Rodney didn’t want to go, and he was terrified when a massive man who looked almost bigger than Ronon knocked on John’s stall door.

“Hey Sheppard.”

John peeked over the top of the stall. “Markham?”

“You and your man should come on a double date with me and Stacks sometime,” the man said.

John said, “Sure. Have your people call my people.”

The man smiled and nodded, continued on to his locker, and Sam ventured far enough into the locker room to grab Rodney and haul him out.

He hovered with the women in the hallway for about ten minutes before Teyla managed to convince them that they wouldn’t need to stand guard during the entirety of John’s post-fight physical. Rodney considered insisting on staying there even if the others left, but then he followed them out to the parking lot.

“What now?” Rodney asked. “John gets checked up, we go back to the hotel, we sleep, we go back to Colorado Springs?”

“Post-fight press-conference, actually,” Teyla said. “Only the really diehard fans stick around to watch those.”

“Oh.” Rodney folded his arms around himself, thinking. “So...do the rest of us go back to the hotel and watch?”

“I probably need to go and stand in with the rest of Atlantis,” Teyla said. “For John.”

Rodney cleared his throat. “If you’re going to be there for John, I want to be there for John.”

Teyla bit her lip, glanced at Sam and Miko.

“Don’t go thinking you can stop him,” Sam said, and Miko nodded.

Teyla fished her cell phone out of her pocket, fired off a text message. Then she nodded. “All right. Follow me.”

 

*

_Six months later…_

“Finally,” John said, an arm around Rodney’s shoulders. “Our own place.”

Rodney and John stood on the threshold of their home. The movers had finally left. Everything was in place. Between the work bonus Rodney got and the prize money from John’s fight against Mitchell, they’d been able to afford a place together. Pauli leaped up onto the back of the couch and prowled along it till he found a spot he liked, and then he settled down, curled up.

Rodney gazed at the den - big enough to host fight nights - and the kitchen. They had a massive bedroom, a couple of guest rooms, and an office-library-music room. This was Rodney’s dream home, not because he’d always dreamed of a home like this, but because he’d dreamed of sharing a home with John.

“So,” John said, sliding his hand lower, into Rodney’s back pocket and squeezing. “There’s a tradition with new houses, right? We need to christen every room.”

Rodney turned to him, brushed a kiss against his lips. “No harm in starting where we are, right?”

John grinned wickedly. “I love the way you think.” He leaned in and kissed Rodney, deeply, thoroughly, backed toward the couch, sank down on it and drew Rodney down with him.

Rodney hummed happily into the kiss, but then John made a pained noise.

Rodney drew back. “What’s wrong?”

John squirmed underneath him, arched his back. “There. Remote.” He tossed it aside and drew Rodney into another kiss.

The television blared to life.

“ - _John Sheppard’s groundbreaking move, coming out as the first openly gay MMA fighter in the world after a daring kiss from his partner, acclaimed physicist Rodney McKay -_ ”

John made a muffled sound of alarm and pulled back. “Not again.” He strained to reach the remote, but he’d tossed it too far.

Rodney tried to help him.

They both tumbled to the floor with a thump. While Rodney trained regularly at the gym with John, he was in no shape to be landing on the floor like this. John cast an irritated look at the television and strained for the remote again.

The news show was playing a clip from that fateful post-fight interview. John, seated at a long table with Mitchell and the other main card fighters and their respective coaches. Flashbulbs sparking in a mini lightning storm. Reporters yelling.

The moderator let one question through.

“John, are you really gay?”

John said, “What does that have to do with my fighting?”

“Who was the man who kissed you?”

“My boyfriend, obviously.”

“So you are gay?”

“Why, are you afraid a gay guy can kick your ass in a fight?”

And Mitchell said, with good humor, “Well, you kicked mine.”

Rodney snagged the remote and turned the television off. Then he crawled over to John, settled against him, and kissed him.

“Hey, are you really gay?” he asked, smirking.

John smirked right back. “Gay enough to let you take me in every single room of this house.”

Rodney kissed him again. “What if I want you to take me?”

“I’m an equal opportunity kind of guy.” John rolled his hips against Rodney’s and nibbled distractingly on the side of his throat. “Hey Rodney?”

“Yes, John?”

“You’re my boyfriend.”

“Yes, John.”

“And I love you.”

“I love you too.”

It took them about a week, but they managed to equal opportunity christen every room in the house, between John training for his next fight and Rodney moving onto the next phase of his research.

Rodney never fully recalled the first time he met John Sheppard, but he remembered every single moment after.


End file.
